26th Golden Disc Awards

The 26th Golden Disc Awards took place on January 11–12, 2012, at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka, Japan. It honored the best in South Korean music released from January 1, 2011, through November 30, 2011. The event was held outside South Korea for the first time in the ceremony's history since its founding in 1986, as well as the first time at the beginning of the following year instead of December. Leeteuk, Park Gyu-ri, Lee Hong-gi, and Bae Suzy served as the hosts for the event.

26th Golden Disc Awards
Date	January 11–12, 2012
Location	Kyocera Dome, Osaka, Japan
Country	South Korea
Hosted by	Leeteuk Park Gyu-ri Lee Hong-gi Bae Suzy
Television/radio coverage
Network	JTBC
← 25th · Golden Disc Awards · 27th →

Criteria

The winners of the digital music and album categories were determined by music sales (80%) and a panel of music experts (20%). The Rookie Artist of the Year award was based on album sales (80%), a panel of music experts (10%) and online votes (10%), while the Popularity Award was based on online votes (80%) and album sales (20%).

Winners and nominees

Super Junior – Album Bonsang, Album Daesang, Popularity Award and MSN Japan Award

Beast – Album Bonsang, MSN International Award and Ceci Asia Icon Award

Girls' Generation, Digital Bonsang and Digital Daesang

Kara, Album Bonsang and Best Hallyu Star Award

Main awards

Winners^[1] and nominees^[2] are listed in alphabetical order. Winners are listed first and emphasized in bold.

Digital Daesang (Song of the Year)	Disc Daesang (Album of the Year)
Girls' Generation – "The Boys" 4Minute – "Mirror Mirror" CNBLUE – "Intuition" G.NA – "Black and White" K.Will – "My Heart Is Beating" Miss A – "Good-Bye Baby" Secret – "Starlight Moonlight" Sistar – "So Cool"	Super Junior – Mr. Simple Beast – Fiction and Fact CNBLUE – First Step f(x) – Pinocchio Infinite – Over the Top Jay Park – Take a Deeper Look Kara – Step MBLAQ – BLAQ Style
Digital Song Bonsang	Album Bonsang
4Minute – "Mirror Mirror" CNBLUE – "Intuition" Girls' Generation – "The Boys" G.NA – "Black and White" K.Will – "My Heart Is Beating" Miss A – "Good-Bye Baby" Secret – "Starlight Moonlight" Sistar – "So Cool" 2NE1 – "Lonely" 2PM – "Hands Up" 4Men – "Live at Least Once" Beast – "On Rainy Days" F.T. Island – "Hello Hello" f(x) – "Pinocchio (Danger)" IU – "The Story I Didn’t Know" Lee Seung-gi – "Time for Love" MBLAQ – "Mona Lisa" Park Bom – "Don’t Cry" Wheesung – "Heartsore Story" Wonder Girls – "Be My Baby"	Beast – Fiction and Fact CNBLUE – First Step f(x) – Pinocchio Infinite – Over the Top Jay Park – Take a Deeper Look Kara – Step MBLAQ – BLAQ Style Super Junior – Mr. Simple 2PM – Hands Up 4Minute – 4Minutes Left After School – Virgin Brown Eyed Girls – Sixth Sense F.T. Island – Return Girls' Generation – The Boys Kiha & The Faces – Kiha & The Faces Leessang – Asura Balbalta Lee Seung-gi – Tonight Miss A – A Class Sung Si-kyung – The First Wonder Girls – Wonder World
Rookie Artist of the Year	Popularity Award
Apink B1A4 Dal Shabet Boyfriend Huh Gak	Super Junior

Special awards

Award	Winner(s)
MSN International Award	Beast
MSN Japan Award	Super Junior
Best Asian Group Award	CNBLUE
Best Hallyu Star Award	Kara
Hallyu Icon Award	Infinite Rainbow Supernova
ViVi Dream Award	CNBLUE
Best Rock Band Award	F.T. Island
Cosmopolitan Artist Award
Ceci Asia Icon Award	Beast
Producer Award	Hong Seung-seong (Cube Entertainment)

Controversy

The event was met with several controversies.^[3] The absences of popular artist such as 2NE1, Big Bang, IU, and T-ara, with none of them receiving any awards despite their successes during the year led to criticisms over fairness.^[3][4] The ceremony was broadcast through JTBC's Lunar New Year special instead of being broadcast live, which drew accusations of the awards being a "JTBC promotional concert" in an attempt to boost the channel's ratings.^[3] The ceremony also drew small controversy for being held abroad, with observers commenting that they did not see how Japan was relevant to the awards when sales figures were calculated from South Korea only. Others pointed out that although the Mnet Asian Music Awards is also a South Korean ceremony that have been held abroad, it had various participants from multiple countries around the world unlike the Golden Disc Awards, where only Korean artists participated.^[4]